


Many Colours

by simplecoffee



Category: The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Genre: Diary/Journal, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 10:44:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21034982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/pseuds/simplecoffee
Summary: Jack and Ramius have a conversation or two.





	Many Colours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theae/gifts).

A snowstorm has been brewing for a few days now. It broke over the horizon last night, and Jack Ryan arrived with it. I should have known there was change in the wind.

I had not seen Ryan since that strange evening on which he welcomed me to the New World, just over a year ago. Maine has treated me well in the interim; for a man who has spent his life at war, I have found that peace becomes me greatly. (I can only dream that Vasily would have found the same.)

I live a sheltered life now, with a new identity, and I was surprised to be contacted by any one of the dear American cowboys whose kindness brought me here. That surprise gave way to concern and worry soon enough; Ryan arrived in a state of shock and mild confusion, stumbling over apologies for coming here unannounced, and then stumbling literally as he crossed the threshold.

It took some work to get an explanation out of him, even in as much vagueness as he would give in case the CIA has a wiretap in my walls. The matter of greater urgency was assessing how badly he was hurt. Guiding him to a sofa proved fairly easy, as did coaxing him to allow me to see and treat the jagged wound in his side.

A betrayal, he said quietly, while I treated him. A breakdown in communication, and officers and agents who disagreed on whether or not to support a hunch he'd tried to play. Ryan is still not a field agent, just an analyst, he said sheepishly, but he had to get involved, couldn't stand idly by when he knew that there were lives at stake. (So, I said to him, you're still a cowboy; and he laughed, though it seemed to hurt him to do so.)

He would be safe here, I told him, when he said he should leave in the morning, and besides, the weather would surely never permit him to be found. He yielded easily, once more, exhaustion writ deep in his eyes.

It proved less easy to be a good host when the boy promptly fell asleep on my sofa. I would have preferred to make him comfortable, lend him some clothes to replace his bloodstained ones and the spare bedroom to sleep in, but I saw the raggedness of him, the look of a man worn thin trying his best under officers who care little for their crew, and I did not have the heart to wake him. I wonder where Admiral Greer is, on this mission; where the good men of the Enterprise and Dallas are. (Yes, I read the debriefs after the fact.) Perhaps Ryan will tell me later in the morning.

So I simply covered him with a blanket, and built a fire to help us weather the storm, and I took up a book, as I do of an evening, and sat myself beside it.

In the meanwhile, Ryan rested, but not easily. I knew I'd heard as much from him about how he got here as I likely ever will, but that did not stop me observing him. Commanding a submarine, one cannot but learn a few things about human nature, even that of the most reclusive among us, and this young man has never been exactly hard to read. He's troubled by more than immediate circumstance, preoccupied with more than just pain. He's never had to school his face into blankness, never had to hide how much he worries about the state of the world. There are those who would take that from him, those who would merely find it amusing. I know better. I know that earnest set of his jaw saved the lives of my officers and myself, and countless more in the war that could have been.

It was barely an hour before he woke. A sudden thing, an attempt to start upright averted when he paled and fell back onto the couch, his eyes filling with tears. I let him have a moment to rub them away, frustrated, his hand ever so slightly trembling, and then to look around the living room, remember where he was.

"You're too tall for that sofa," I told him, when he seemed aware enough to hear it, and the smile I received in answer was well attempted, but hardly a smile at all.

"Could you help me up," he whispered, as though biting his tongue while asking, and allowed me to maneuver him upright, slowly, wincing deeply as he moved.

Silence filled the next several minutes, as Ryan breathed valiantly through a fit of pain, controlled, as though he had done it before; resigned, as though he would do it hence. His hands still shaking, as though this pain was greater, deeper, than the wound I'd sutured for him earlier.

As the storm raged outside, I offered to make him tea.

We talked for a while, by the fire. I learned nothing more about the CIA's latest exploits, but with some questioning, I learned about him. I learned about his new book, analyzing the Cuban crisis. I learned that he's frightened of flying, and of storms. I learned that he was once a Marine - or almost a Marine. I learned that on cold days, his old spinal injury makes itself miserably known; and I told him that we all have scars, whether or not they may be visible to the eye. And so I found him a hot water bottle, which he did not protest, much as his eyes betrayed his wanting to as well as his gratitude.

"I'm not saying all this so you pity me," he said instead, a curious, yearning look in his eyes; "I'm saying it so you know me. With all the books and profiles and...newspaper clippings I've read about you, it seems only fair."

"It does seem only fair," I said, and reached for his hand.

He did not protest that either, though he would not meet my eyes; did not acknowledge it out loud, but he answered my gentle grip with a stronger one of his own. I spoke to him in turn, then, silly tales of when I was younger, less silly tales of friends and family I left behind in a world that would not dare look to the horizon. I showed him the faded military tattoos on each of my arms. And once his pained expression had slightly faded, once the grip of his hand had relaxed in mine, I leaned over and took a chance. I looked to the horizon.

I kissed him on the cheek, and I watched his eyes fall closed.

He is, as ever, easy to read, Jack Ryan. For all he did not answer, did not yet speak, he turned to lean his forehead against my own, and when I asked if this was all right, he said, quietly, "Yes, sir; yes, it is."

(It is morning now, and it still is.)


End file.
